Escape from the Drooling Octopod! (10 page)

Dashiell, however, was more interested in proving, once and for all, that his stepsister was a loony tune. Seeing the real McCoy web was a real blow to Dashiell. Before he could stop himself, he yelped.

The next thing he knew he was surrounded by scientists angry at him for intruding.

“Dashiell, what are you doing?” Scilla called as she clambered up the stairs. “We're not supposed to go up here!”

Oh, great, here comes the rest of the funny farm
, Dashiell thought as he saw Beamer and Ghoulie right behind his sister. He quickly recovered from his momentary lapse of cool, though. To tell the truth, Dashiell was pretty impressed with the web and the scientific equipment around it. He had a hard time restraining the urge to punch, twist, and turn every control device he saw. But he had no intention of letting on. He'd spent a lot of time promoting himself as the authority on just about everything. So he had to let them know he was on top of things. The scientists seemed frozen in shock as he swaggered across the attic. He spouted out a few facts about spiders, things he'd heard in somebody's book report.
That
should be enough for these second-rate intellects
, he thought.

You see, Dashiell believed he needed to put this web business in its place. Right now, this was Scilla's thing; he had to make it his. Still acting the professor, he picked up a discarded towel rod to act as a pointer. “Notice the circular shape of the web,” Dashiell said. “This is typical of the orb web spider. The female's web is smaller.”

He heard a scientist choke back a laugh.
Was he getting his
facts backward? Maybe the female's web is larger.
Dashiell didn't like feeling insecure. He wasn't used to it. Still, he went on: “But as big as this web is, spider silk is a very . . . uh . . . weak material — ” He took a swipe at the web to demonstrate his point. He was surprised when it didn't break — not even close.

Suddenly he felt body blows high and low as Beamer and Ghoulie tackled him. Then he felt someone pick him up by his belt buckle. The next thing he knew, he was back in the hallway downstairs and hearing the door to the attic slam behind him.

Dashiell's face was as bright as a sunset, but Ghoulie was pretty sure he saw a thundercloud hovering above his head. At any rate, he stormed out of the house with the force of a gale wind.

“You just wait until I tell my grandma!” he yelled at the three behind him. Then he pointed at his stepsister, screaming, “You think you've been in trouble before, just wait! Letting the bird out of the cage was nothing! Rigging the trip wire to make the lamp fall over when you passed by was something else. I can do that kind of stuff all day, and Grandma will never know. You're going to look like a walking catastrophe before I'm through with you!”

That's when an acorn bopped him on the head. He looked up. His grandmother was leaning out her second-floor window, staring at him through a major scowl.

“Dashiell, you and I need to have a little talk,” she said before she pulled back through the window and slammed it closed.

Dashiell's voice dropped to a hush, but it was a voice filled with venom. “I'll get you!” he growled through clenched teeth. “I'll get you all.”

He then spun around and stalked toward the tree. “I know about your stupid tree house and the Star-Fighters,” he said with a mocking laugh. “Star-Fighters!” he spat. “Who do you think you're kidding?”

Dashiell burst out laughing even harder when he saw the plywood, pulley-driven elevator. “I could have done better with rubber bands and Popsicle sticks,” he said. “And you call this a transporter?”

When Dashiell reached a point about halfway up the tree, Ghoulie expected the tree to react to Dashiell's bad intentions. When that didn't happen, Ghoulie asked Beamer, “What's wrong with the tree? It should have bumped him out by now — you know, the hurricane winds, the plague of insects and all?”

“I don't know,” said Beamer. “Maybe the tree is worried about Scilla's feelings or — ”

“No,” insisted Ghoulie, “all that the field around the tree does is sense the brain-wave pattern.”

“He's definitely not nice,” Beamer said with a grimace, “but maybe it's because he has no intention of physically hurting anybody or anything.”

“Sticks and stones, huh?” muttered Ghoulie.

“I guess,” said Beamer with a shrug. “I never did like that saying, though. It always seemed to me that cuts and scratches healed a lot faster than hurts from words.”

As the transporter drew closer to the tree ship, Dashiell had even more things to say: “Talk about a rat trap!” he said with another twisted laugh. “That ship is nothing but splinters in the making. Are you sure it's not going to blow down with the next breeze?”

Ghoulie was really getting tired of hearing Dashiell's laugh. At that moment the wind picked up and he felt his hopes reviving.

But then the transporter bumped into its dock near the ship. “Hey, Scilla!” Dashiell shouted down to her. “Where did you say you've been in this termite nest? You have a better chance of finding aliens on a skateboard!”

Then the door to the tree ship opened, and someone stepped out. Dashiell screamed, and they both disappeared!

For a moment, nobody said anything.

“What . . . what happened?” Scilla finally asked.

“Where did they go?” Ghoulie asked at almost the same time.

Two heartbeats later, all three of them were scrambling up the tree.

“Somebody was up there with him,” Scilla gasped. “Somebody who came out of the ship.”

“Did anybody see who it was?” Beamer asked.

“I just heard the door open,” Ghoulie said. “Then there was the scream.”

“Who could it be? Jared? Jack?”

“Don't know,” said Beamer as he pulled himself up on the ramp. “But we gotta find both of them faster than light!”

14

Rock and Roll

Dashiell had no idea where he was, except that it was dark. Wherever he was, the sound of his scream still echoed around like he was in an underground cavern.
What did I see? It was a monster — that was for sure. Where is it now?
He backed away from what he could not see. Then he began to sense a faint light. His eyes were adjusting. Slowly coming into view before him was the same creature he'd seen in the tree. He screamed again!

“What are you screaming about?” the creature asked, pumping her arms and fists down to her side in irritation. “Could you please quiet down before you break my eardrums?”

It's a girl, thought Dashiell in amazement, the ugliest girl I've ever seen. “I . . . I . . . What . . . Where . . .?” he gasped. “You . . . you're — ” he started. But then a whole sea of yellow eyes emerged from rocks and crevices behind the girl. Their eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

Dashiell backed away as these new creatures approached.

The ugly girl, who didn't see them behind her, looked puzzled at his reaction. Then, when they were close enough that she probably felt their hot breath on her neck, she finally whipped around. She gave a shrill squeal and bolted back into Dashiell, who jumped immediately back from her.

The faces of the creatures with the glowing eyes became more visible. Their skin, which was very wrinkled and pale, glowed a light, phosphorescent green. But what puzzled Dashiell the most was how they crowded around the ugly girl. They shied away from him like he was a leper. But they were all over her, fondling her blonde hair and her clothing. If they kept this up, she had a good chance of being both bald and dressed in shreds very soon. In fact, they seemed to be fawning over her like she was a beauty queen or a goddess.

Ghoulie had concluded that Dashiell and his unwilling companion had been sent somewhere by the ship's transporter, which was suddenly acting like a real transporter. They had no idea how to find out where they had gone, though, not as long as the ship remained in the tree.

But something was happening. Beamer was already wearing his uniform, and the tree ship was slowly morphing into something other than plywood.

“It couldn't have sent them too far,” said Ghoulie as he ran to his crayon-painted instrument panel. “Come on, ship, take off!” he muttered, banging the plywood panel. “Take off!” The trouble, of course, was that, until the ship “took off,” those instruments would stay just paint on plywood. There was nothing to read. But even as he stared at it, the panel began to transform into the razzle-dazzle display familiar in their adventures.

“It's happening,” said Beamer, who was already looking more mature in his uniform, “just much slower than usual.”

“We need to get out of this tree now!” yelled Scilla, becoming more distressed by the second.

“Hit the thruster switches, Ghoulie, and see what happens,” Beamer said.

Nothing happened. “Okay, okay,” Ghoulie said as he took some deep breaths. “Let's all calm down. It's just not ready yet.”

They all breathed deeply and either sat down or leaned against something. Scilla, whose jeans were turning into an ensign's uniform, looked up at Beamer. “Didn't you once say that when the meteor struck this tree, it was like . . . uh . . . ‘the finger of God touched the earth'?”

“That was Old Lady — I mean Ms. — Parker who said it,” Beamer answered. “But you're right. God's in charge even if his timing sometimes seems a little slow.”

The next thing Scilla heard was a lot of bleeping and clicking and whirring. She turned and saw that her instrument panel was all lit up. Then she wasn't Scilla anymore.

Ensign Bruzelski quickly flicked through a number of screens on her monitor. That's when she noticed a holographic image visible in the middle of the room. She had the strangest feeling that she hadn't seen this holographic 3-D star chart before. But the thought faded, and she continued as if it had always been available. One point in the chart was highlighted. She zoomed in and said, “Hey, y'all, like I thought, they've been transported away, all right, but not too far away — well, within the solar system, anyway.”

“Then get us there!” Captain MacIntyre ordered. “Ignition!”

Suddenly they were traveling through what seemed to be a many-colored fog bank. They felt heavy, like their feet and legs were chained to concrete — their skin stretched like it was made of rubber.

“Ives!” the captain said. “Where have you put us?”

Something that looked like a huge jellyfish splattered onto a window. “I'm not sure, Captain,” Commander Ives said. “Looks like we're in the middle of another ocean.”

“Then why do I feel like I'm wearing lead underwear and my stomach is in my big toe?” asked Ensign Bruzelski.

“Big sea . . . big planet,” groaned the commander with the enormous gravity stretching his lips across his face like splattered bubble gum.

Their ship gave in to the massive gravity and started to fall deeper into the multicolored sea. They fell faster and faster until it seemed as if they were dropping in an elevator. They and everything loose on the bridge hit the ceiling with a splat! Stomachs don't really like all this confusion about up and down, so they rebelled.

I knew I should have skipped the anchovies
, thought Scilla as she turned green.

“Come on, baby,” Commander Ives belched as he fired all thrusters, the antigravity array, as well as the electro-trashmatic, goonjammer defense array. The ship gradually slowed its fall and began to struggle back up. Everything — people and yecch — fell to the floor in a major splash.

Stars began to fade into view as the ship surged out of the soupy atmosphere.

At the same time, three huge boulders struck one another and blew apart. A spray of tiny rocks spattered across the hull like a hailstorm. Pretty soon, though, Bruzelski noticed that they were in a whole field of tiny rocks that kept splattering against the hull. Some of them stuck like chewing gum and began to build up into globs.